Crow Girls

August 21st 2:45 am- Sitting and listening to you play was the sweetest of gifts.  Watching your fingers move over the frets and strings in a seemingly choreographed dance, sometimes soft and caressing, sometimes nearly frantic.  Who will I watch now with such longing and desire? 
I can feel myself getting older.  The more sleep I miss the more meals I skip.  Instead I run at night going no where.  I try to paint my feelings away, but the music that plays as I paint only serves to remind me that no matter how I try to fill the empty spot in my heart it will never be quite right, or quite enough.  So I close a box around my heart and just hope that some how some where there is a tiny death waiting for me, because I can not wait for this pain in my throat,  this pain in my chest, the pain in my heart to kill me. 
September 4th 5:28 am- I lie on my back in the home of a stranger.  It is dark and cold, despite the blankets that surround my body.  I wear my robe like a shield against the touch of another.  He will return to try, but for now I am alone.
Who is now the one to cradle my head and wipe away these tears?  Why could it not be you?  A destructive path lies ahead of me as sure as one lies behind me. 
I am so angry.  I am so angry at you.  I am so angry at myself. 
You pulled me close and pushed me away, and pulled me closer and then pushed me away even farther.  I loved more, I tried harder, but I only came off as crazy or perhaps insane in my actions.  Nothing I did was right.  Nothing I did was enough.  So you drove me crazy. 
Everyone was made to hurt.  Everyone I fall in love with hurts me.  I tried so fucking hard to not love you.  You did things to me that no one should have to tolerate, but my heart goes all sickeningly soft and squishy and forgiving and ever so tolerant, because I understand, and I understand, and I finally understand.  There is no island for me.  I am an unwelcome bit of sunshine that just muddies things up.  I am the kind of sunshine where it rains, with the possibility of a double rainbow that never comes. 
I tear down walls and instead of healing, I place a new kind of sickness.  One that is bittersweet.
5:55- I wait alone, hoping that things will not advance further.  In just three hours my alarm will chime, and yet not chime, for it is music that plays when it is time to pay the sandman for his dreams.  I do not have to rise at this point, for work will still be several hours away, but I wish to stand and wash the filth of another’s bed from me before I step into the bright and painful sunlight of the day. 
My car has finally died on me.  So I ride and I ride with glee the motorcycle I poured so much of my time into to fix.  I am bundled ever so in my helmet and safety jacket, knowing that despite my efforts I may yet crush my ugly little body upon the hood of a car or on the pavement in front of me.  But I am ever so careful. 
I went to a concert on the 2nd of September.  It was a folk metal concert, and for a small amount of time, a few hours at least, while wedged between two men, the rail in front of me and countless metal heads behind me I forgot what pain was.  Every inch of me burned with fatigue and adrenaline, sweat poured from every pore, and my hair loose and unbound windmilled through the air in perfect timing with close to fifty others in the crowd.  I wore all black.  Combat boots, skin tight to the knee capris, long sleeve fishnet shirt, a small vest trimmed with a feminine touch of lace, goggles, thin scarf of chiffon to hide the bruises, and the ever present pocket knife nestled in my cleavage. 
The bruises… I fought the good fight and yet came away damaged.  Perfect little fingertip shaped marks scour the sides of my neck, but hey, you should see the other guy.  A joke that must always be followed by a nervous laughter that is meant to reassure, but that only truly reaffirms the suspicion and fears of those close enough to hear. 
Why can I not find that simple nirvana that comes from complete overwhelming stimulation, just for a few hours each day?  Would that cure me? I do not know, but it sure as hell would distract me from this ever pounding head ache that comes from me battling my own mind. 
You see, the others are breaking through.  Those who can not be really named, but whom I try to name anyway.  Esmeralda, Eme, and perhaps countless others who strive to overwhelm Emerald.  The one true self.  The self that takes pride in its sobriety, the one who takes pride in her celibacy, the self who strives at work,  and has a plan. 

Then there is the one who wants to eat and drink and fuck and paint and run out at night in the dangerous parts of town.  This is the one who takes over as I lie flat upon my back in the home of a stranger, waiting for he who wishes to touch to return to try again. 

September 11 9:09am- Most people are probably having that moment where they realize the date and say a quick prayer for everyone who died in 2001.  All I am doing is trying to think coherently through the burning pain.  The constant ache.

 
September 14th 11:00am- It took me several days to be able to sit back down and explain myself.  I am still in an extreme amount of pain, but I work through it.  On September 9th at around 4:30 am I was riding my motorcycle to work.  I came around the corner right before the interstate bring on I 90 between Minnesota and Wisconsin, and there not more than fifteen feet in front of me I saw the glint of two little eyes.  A small raccoon had found its way out on to the bridge.  I popped my clutch and squeezed my brake while stomping my rear brake with my foot and I swerved slightly in an arch around the raccoon, but the poor little fur ball bolted right back into the path of my motorcycle, and I hit him square in the middle of his back.  The bike and I cartwheeled over each other and I tumbled forward over my handle bars.  I lost track of the motorcycle at that point.  I hit the ground rolling, and after the initial impact I tumbled at least fifteen more times traveling about twenty five feet.  My initial reaction was to of course catch myself with my hands, But after I hit the ground the first time I pulled my hands up close to my chin.  On the fourth or fifth rotation my helmet popped open, So I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped for the best.  I lost one of my shoes and the sock off my left foot.  I am not sure what it was that went through my foot, but it looks vaguely like it was punctured by my kickstand.  My left knee and foot took the brunt of the impact and I tore off quite a bit of skin.  Now I look at my legs and I can see massive bruises forming on both legs.  My right one is bruised from hip to just below my knee on the out side.  My left leg is a mass of purple bruises and blood pooling under the skin, stuck together with big bits of road rash and cuts.  I also have a busted lip from my helmet, scrapped wrists and my left pinky finger knuckles and joints are a little scrapped.  My jaw is pretty sore from being knocked out of socket and my arms are sore from the tumble, But I am relatively uninjured from the waist up.  My helmet saved me from loosing half my face, and the Kevlar jacket I was wearing saved me from breaking my neck or back, and from loosing any skin on my forearms, shoulders, chest, and stomach.  
After I stopped my roll across the pavement, I laid there for a moment assessing the level of damage I had received.  I determined that my right leg, my back and my arms and neck were not broken, but I could not feel anything from my hands except a constant burning.  I stood up slowly dragging my leg foot in a zombie like shuffle until I was off the highway.  My motorcycle was laying on its side close the the other side of the road, but far enough off the road that I just left it lying there with its single head light glaring crookedly out across the pavement.  Little bits of midnight blue fender and faceted red taillight glittered across the road in that single beam of light.  Curled and luckily dead on the other side of the road lay the poor little raccoon.  If he had still been alive I do not know if I could have handled what happened next. 
 
At this point I saw headlights coming around the curve of the road.  A large semi truck came swiftly around the corner taking the bridge at 60 mph.   My loan sneaker sat with its toe facing the path of one of those many wheels.  I watched as the shoe was shredded from the impact.  A minor thing I assure you, yet if I had not been conscious that damage would have surely been to me.  I waved my arms and screamed at the top of my lungs for help, but the driver continued on. 
 
I pulled off my decimated helmet with pain shooting through fingers that would not quite do as commanded, as I slid down the cement embankment into a sitting position along the side of the road.  I dropped the helmet down beside my broken bike in a moment of extreme defeat. At this point I tried to examine my left knee.  After one look and seeing the white of what I was sure was bone through the ragged hole in my torn up work pants, I looked up at the sky and fought off a wave of nausea.
 
Three cars and one more semi truck passed me by in as many minutes.  No one stopped.  I have never felt as alone and helpless as I did in that fifteen minutes along side the road.
 
After trying to wave down the last car that passed I gathered myself and said, "no one is going to help you but your self," which is ironically what I would imagine you saying to me when I am sad or when I feel like I am just not going to be able to handle life anymore. 
 
I gathered my strength and found my back pack hoping my phone would still be in the side pocket where I had slid it that morning before hoping onto my bike.  It was there, but in pieces.  I gathered them in my hands and pushed them back together in a symbolance of what the phone use to look like hoping it would work for one more phone call.  I fumbled with the power button and waited the full minute it takes to boot up and come to the main screen.  My only companion a dead raccoon, that stared with dead little eyes across the road at me, not accusing, only sad and questioning.  Not understanding what had happened to him.  One little leg raised in the air, like a fist to the sky. 
 
The phone finally began to function after what was surely only a minute, but felt like ten, and I dialed 911.  The operator answered after two rings, which seemed like far too long for my addled mind.  Panic had started to set in, and only then did I begin to cry.   She asked me what had happened and where I was, as another car drove past.  I described my injuries and what had happened and where I was, and she said someone that had driven past had just called in to report an accident.  I stayed on the line with her until two police officers arrived, and finally a car pulled over to make sure I was alright.  I then hung up with her and talked to the police, and explained to them what had happened.  I called my mother to let her know what had happened, but that I was ok, and then the ambulance showed up and they trundled me off to the hospital.  It was shortly after five am.  My body was going into shock at that point, but I was so coherent and alert, that it was not immediately apparent.  
 
Upon reaching the hospital they washed my wounds and took x rays and that is when I started to shiver and I could not stop clenching my jaw.  They said I was going into shock from the pain and adrenaline.  They wrapped me up in warm blankets and made me take some pain killers and they put a lydocain gel on my open wounds to cut the pain.  I began to return to normal. 
 
Nothing was broken, and I was well protected by my jacket and helmet.  It was very surprising that my injuries were so minor.  It hurts terribly, and I limp now, though that will go away once my foot heals.  But I am alive and that is what matters. 
 

The scars will remind me that some are not so lucky…